Of Thankyou's and Tea
by ElizabethLestrade
Summary: An added scene and alternate conclusion to the episode, "The Second Stain", in which a certain inspector notices a particular brand of thankyou on our favorite detective. This is a one shot, and reviews are welcome and appreciated!


**Authors Note**: This is an added scene to the episode, "The Second Stain". I thought of it almost immediately as I watched the actual ending of the episode, and what with my insufferable Holmes/Lestrade ideas, churned out this alternate conclusion. I appreciate constructive reviews, so please, if you have an opinion, or an idea of something you'd like to see, feel free to share it! As always, the character of Sherlock Holmes belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Elizabeth "Beth" Lestrade belongs to DIC, as does the world of _Sherlock Holmes in the 22__nd__ Century_.

**SH22**

"All in a day's work, eh Holmes, ole boy!" Watson walked into their flat at 221B Baker Street, thoroughly satisfied with the day's events. "We found the stolen items, found the real culprit, and _you_ even got a kiss for your efforts!"

"Yes, well…" Holmes cleared his throat as he removed his deerstalker and Inverness from his person and hung them up on the coat rack by the door. "She was very grateful for the turn of events. The disk was recovered and her husband's name was cleared. If a man had so ensured that my wife's honor was restored, I may thank him the same way!"

"Thank who in what way?"

Lestrade appeared from the kitchen, a perplexed look on her face. Holmes stood agape, while Watson merely looked from inspector to detective before settling his eyes on a particularly interesting light display on the three paned window in front of him.

"Hope you don't mind, I was just waiting on you guys to get back. Grayson's given us another case; something about dogs disappearing…Holmes, what are you doing?" Lestrade peered at him, brushing her short brown hair back from her face. Her friend was facing somewhat away from her, not looking her in the eyes or even in the face as was customary for him when he spoke to her. "Holmes I'm over here…"

"Yes, yes, of course…" closing his eyes, and contemplating saying his Last Rights to himself, the man in question faced fully the woman in his flat.

"My, my, my…someone's been busy," Beth finally snickered, leaning against the back of the couch and crossing her feet at the ankle. "Either she was _very_ grateful for your help, or she was just a particularly full-lipped woman."

"Oh, Lestrade, please," Holmes groaned, "I cleared her husband of a most unfortunate crime that would have almost certainly found him guilty of treason had the rouse been allowed to go on."

"And, as I said, she was obviously thankful." Lestrade bit her lip, holding back a grin. For some silly reason, she often enjoyed Sherlock Holmes' discomfort when it came to members of the opposite sex. It was as if he had no idea what to do with them sometimes. And this coming from a gentleman of the Victorian era, where chivalry, and honor, and how best to flatter a woman was the stuff of the day.

"Well, I believe all this excitement has me in need of a regeneration period, so, I best be off!" Watson, sensing a storm brewing, quickly bade his good nights and headed off to his room quickly and quietly, shutting his door firmly. Neither Holmes nor Lestrade watched him leave; their eyes were on each other.

"Was she cute?"

_Merciful God in Heaven, I beg you; what I have I done to deserve this?_ None the less, Holmes muttered something that Lestrade couldn't tell from positive or negative. So he wasn't going to give her an answer? Fine. She'd get it herself. Holmes, for his part, stood stock still, giving her a look that was somewhere between a glower and only just slightly amused as she headed, not for him, but for the garments which he'd hung up just moments ago.

"She's a blonde, I think," Beth started, holding the strand out to dangle freely. It bounced slightly in the air. "Long hair, wavy…but, not a natural blonde." She squinted slightly at the top tip of the strand held between her thumb and index finger. "She's a brunette." Lestrades' eyebrows rose as she walked back around to Holmes' front, as if to ask if she was on the right track. The detective said nothing. Beth's fingers touched Sherlock's' chin gently to turn it to the side, revealing more of the lipstick print the woman had left on him. "Nope, definitely not a thin lipped girl, but around your height. If you're wondering how I know that, the lipstick is applied evenly on your face. If she were shorter than you, there would be more makeup on the bottom lip mark than the top." Beth was proud of herself; she knew she was correct in her observations. Her eyes took on a sultry look to them, and her voice lowered to a husky tone. "So uh…did she invite you in for some tea after you solved the case?" She chuckled as Sherlock's burned a bright red, clearly understanding what she was implying.

"Oh, Lestrade, _really_!" Holmes stepped around his female companion and headed into the kitchen, grabbing a cloth and turning on the water, wiping at his cheek frantically to get rid of the lipstick mark. Behind him, in the door way, he could hear Lestrade giggling. "What is it that so amuses you?" Lestrade managed to get a hold of herself fairly quickly to answer his question. "You."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Oh, zed, here; give me that cloth, you're only wiping it all over your face, not wiping it off." Without waiting to be handed the towel, Lestrade strode into the kitchen in a few paces, took the wipe from Holmes hand, and proceeded to clean his face as though she were a mother cleaning the dirt off her child. "You can face murderers and robbers without batting an eye. Even Fenwick and Moriarty don't faze you, but the moment a woman shows any kind of affection for you, you're face get's as red as an apple, and you fall all over yourself trying to explain it, or explain it away." She gathered the make-up together on his face before beginning the process of wiping it up and away. "Come to think of it, the only woman I've ever read that you had any kind of possible interest in was Irene Adler, but even that was more of an intellectual interest and not a physical one."

"Yes, well, physical relationships never held my attention for long," Holmes mused, standing still until Lestrade stepped back and began washing the towel off in the sink. "I often couldn't find a happy medium between intelligence and beauty. Either the very beautiful were very stupid, or the very intelligent were not terribly physically appealing."

"That's a shame," Beth wrung the cloth out thoroughly and draped it over the faucet, "whenever I've had relationships, I've often…_enjoyed_ that particular aspect. I'm a career woman as much as the next working girl, but I think I might go crazy if I didn't have a date every now and again."

"Do not mistake the term 'not often' for the word 'never', Lestrade. I had a few liaisons, though they were in my younger years…or…present years, I suppose, as it now is."

"Ah, so now we get to the heart of it!" Lestrade slapped the counter in glee and spun around to lean against it. "Watson forgot to mention a few of those 'torrid affairs' in his journals and publications, didn't he?"

"John Watson was my closest friend, my dear Lestrade, but that does not mean that he knew everything about me, especially about the years before we met."

"Yea?" Lestrade raised her eyebrows slightly, surprise showing on her features just barely, "what did he miss?"

Holmes sighed. "I suppose he might have missed that, although I was a devoted student of deductive reasoning, I was still a young man, who was prone to illogical, physical desires." He ran his fingers along the counter in thought, a mean spirited idea forming in his overworked brain. He felt he owed it to her after all, for her greeting of him in the living room earlier. As his fingers crawled along the counter, so too did his feet along the floor until he was mere centimeters away from Lestrade, who was effectively pinned between the sink and him.

"I suppose he missed that…my own desire to discover the mystery of women in general led me to occasionally indulge in a man's natural lust for them as well." Holmes looked down a Beth, her violet eyes boring deep into his cobalt blue ones. Did she know the game he was playing? Sherlock was almost sure she did, and in knowing the game, she was attempting to let him play it without having an effect on her. But she wasn't doing a particularly good job of it, and he could tell.

"My dear Beth, are you alright? You seem to be…slightly out of breath?" Holmes peered down at her, allowing his hand to rest on hers. "Do you feel faint? You have a death grip on the edge of the counter. If it were a man, I'm sure you'd have strangled him by now…" His Victorian sense of decorum should have been mounting the flag of shame and dishonor for the way he was behaving, but Holmes had come to the conclusion that as this was a different century; there were different rules for everything, and that included the rules of physical relations between men and women. Women were much more forward, sly, coy, flirtatious, and ambitious in this day than they had been in his old era. The rules had changed.

Holmes would change with them.

Knowing that he may give himself away in the process, but never doubting that he could control his actions, Sherlock leaned against Lestrade slightly, just enough, just barely so that she could feel his front against her own. His mouth was very nearly touching hers and their eyes had not left each other's since the detectives little game started. His hand traveled from her clenched fist up her arm to the crook of her neck, and finally to her cheek, which he cupped delicately and softly. "Beth?" he breathed softly, sinfully, silkily. Her only answer was a slight murmur of recognition.

And as suddenly as he had instigated the sexual tension between them, he ended it. Stepping back, he smirked at her.

"Would you care for some tea?"


End file.
